Saturday, July 8, 2017

Autobots Roll Out!

Want to add Transformers to your Pathfinder or Starfinder game? It's probably not something you've thought about, but now that I've mentioned it, you're kind of interested, right? No? To each their own. However, if your answer is yes, Epic Races: Adapticons has got what you need.

The pdf is 25 pages (including front and back cover, a page of advertisements, three pages of OGL). It gives you everything you need to play a transfor... adapticon in Pathfinder (or soon Starfinder). The book starts with history and origins of the race. To be honest, if I added them to my game I'd probably just straight lift all of that from Transformers. That being said, the background isn't a bad one.

In game terms the designers created the race emulating racial creation rules from the Advanced Race Guide. Adapticons are "multi-formed constructs" which means they have the construct and shapechanger subtype. They are large and get bonuses to Str, Wis, and Con, while getting penalties on Dex and Cha. They get an alternate vehicle form, though there are also options to have a metallic animal form, or even not being able to transform. There are Pathfinder favored class options and two racial archetypes (Spybot and Transporter). While these are cool, I kind of wish this pdf had came out a little later and we could have seen Starfinder racial archetypes (assuming the game has them). Note that adapticons do use vehicle rules which are found in Ultimate Combat. We get a new vehicle (dwarven dozer), nine feats (metamagic and racial), and several bits of new equipment (some magical, some technological).

Overall, I think this is a fun pdf. It's not a must have by any means, but it's still really cool. The race isn't overpowered and due to its size and actually has some rough drawbacks (beware of rust monsters).

To be honest, I mainly picked it up because I thought it would be cool for Starfinder, and I hope the pdf gets an update once that book comes out.